Trance Sessions

Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara , 2010

Following many months of touring , taking their raw afro-blues to increasingly enthusiastic audiences, Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara took the spirit of the live performance back to the recording studio. As their repertoire of music unfolds over time on many different stages it takes on a character only hinted at on their studio albums. Juldeh, using griot skills honed since childhood, stirs the audience to a frenzy while Adams' drone guitar can provide sheets of sonic attack sometimes closer to The Velvet Underground's Sister Ray than a conventional world music gig. These recordings, the Trance Sessions, are their first featuring ex-Shriekback drummer Martyn Barker, were made live in the studio at the end of 2009, each track done in one take, with no overdubs. They are being released in their full length forms, with an African sense of time and structure - no 3.30 here. Repetition builds on each track that grows slowly from song to abstraction, infused with psychedelic energy, a web of sound far greater than the sum of the three player's parts.

Reviews

...the most consistantly satifying music they've recorded to date.What a great idea on Justin & Juldeh's part! ...Adams' guitar still has its trademark crunch and howl, and Juldeh's ritti (one-stringed fiddle) swoops and soars above the maelstrom while his mellow voice gives each song strong focus. But most significantly, this longer form suits the trance-like cyclical structure of the music, making these epic excursions the most consistently satisfying music they've recorded to date. Just what the witch doctor ordered.
Properganda Magazine (UK)

The Trance Sessions - Headbanging West African hard rock with a demented swing."I LOVE the way we are reclaiming these old riffs as African," Justin Adams said of their second album, last year's Tell No Lies. "The Anglo way of playing them had become four-square and lumpy and the swing had been lost. This is dance music, but it's still brutal, basic, roough rock 'n' roll with one-string solos." On this third outing, a three-track 36-minute affair, the Anglo-Gambian duo (augmented by percussionist Martyn Baker) offer intense, lengthy one-take improvisations that instantly find their grooves and stick to them, building to exhausting, insanely psychedelic climaxes, Adams' guitar playing second fiddle to Juldeh Camara's fierce, one-string ritti. No Bo Diddley riffs or nods to Saharan blues, the result is nasty, brutal, outstanding.
Mojo (UK)

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